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pmx
You'd never need all of these though, would you? There is a lot of overlap between the dongles that unless you had a lot of devices you wouldn't require. For example I can't see anyone buying an HDMI to DVI + a Lightning to VGA + a Mini Displayport to DVI. Feels a little bit like saying ford make xx models of car & it would cost you £1 million to buy them all.
spaceisballer
Title is very silly, just trying to jump on the dongle hate train. I don't have or own any dongles despite my many Apple devices (technically I have one for my iPhone 7 with headphones, but I have air pods if I ever need headphones). I think Apple knows most consumers don't need dongles at all.
dismantlethesun
I actually have most of these because I tend to buy new Apple equipment, and try to connect it to old non-apple equipment.

Something like a lightning to VGA adapter is a must have in my household.

undersuit
Why? What about your previous non-dongle needing equipment was so inferior you replaced it for a new Mac and yet you didn't replace the VGA monitor? Some kind of exceedingly rare edge case?
slededit
while VGA is getting quite old, generally speaking a monitor will outlive several computers.
photojosh
That one should absolutely be an adapter. An iPhone with a VGA port? Hahaha...
nkkollaw
This title is ridiculous. I'm not even going to click on it.
plussed_reader
This reminds me of the dongle hell of the 90's; Apple had done so well once Jobs got back onboard; it was at the end of his tenure that MDP took over, and then Tbolt, that brought us right back into the nickel and diming, "we have a $30-80 solution for your problem."
VeejayRampay
Note that for every single one of those dongles, there are a handful of manufacturers that offer the same quality for half the price. It's not an issue that they have such a large offering for connectivity, it's that their items are overpriced, I mean $30 for a Lightning to 30-pin adapter, what a racket.
Fezzik
Personally, I would prefer the option for 23 dongles (most of which I will never use, or buy) to a multitude of ports on my laptop (most of which I will never use). The first seems like it provides me options, the second seems like it adds unnecessary failure points and openings to a delicate machine.
GuB-42
You can think of extra ports as failure points but you can also think of them as redundancy. Having a single port to connect everything causes a lot of wear on a single point of failure.
photojosh
That's why there are 4 USB-C/TB3 ports on the new MacBook Pros (2 on the cheapest one). The new iMac only has 2 USB-C/TB3 ports, but also retains all the legacy ones.

So the only issue is with the 12" MacBook and its single USB-C port. Yep, that's a point of failure, but for it's intended users it's alright. On previous laptops you'd be screwed if you lost your AC adapter port anyway.